Isra-Mart srl: U.S. dairy industry reduces carbon footprint

Isra-Mart srl news:
With all the public focus on environmental sensitivity, dairy farmers want to do their part by reducing the carbon footprint of the industry.

Local dairy owners Bernadette Mulliken and Barb Bouma summed up that focus recently.

Mulliken’s family owns Vista Grande Dairy south of Plainview, while Bouma’s family owns Legacy Farms east of town.

“Our family has to live off the environment,” she said, emphasizing that environmental stewardship not only is important to the humans, but to the cows, as well.

Bouma agreed. “It’s ‘our land, our cows, our passion,’ ” she said.

Dr. Ellen Jordan, a dairy specialist with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Dallas, said the industry is working on environmental issues on several fronts.

In general terms, she said the dairy industry was able to reduce its overall carbon footprint by 41 percent from 1944 and 2007, according to a study conducted by Cornell University.

Primarily, she said, that was accomplished through improved efficiency in production versus the cost of maintenance for the herd.

“Now, the cow is producing four times as much milk for that same maintenance so that reduces the carbon footprint. We had 59 percent more milk produced in 2007 using 64 percent fewer cows than in 1944,” she said, pointing out that those numbers are for the domestic industry only.

“Just this year,” she continued, “A new Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations study showed global milk production, processing and transportation contributes just 2.7 percent of greenhouse emissions. Actually, the U.S. industry is even less, due to our much higher efficiency than the rest of the world.”

Jordan said in addition to improved efficiency the dairy industry is looking at ways to generate bioenergy from its waste products.

“In general, our dairy farmers are looking at this as a way to further enhance their environmental stewardship,” she said.

Two things that are being looked at are using the methane produced on dairies, as well as waste products to generate some form of energy.

There are some challenges to those efforts, however, she said.

To begin with, the technology is pretty expensive, so it has its best chance of being cost effective with larger dairies.

“Fortunately, our dairies in the Panhandle are large enough to support these systems,” she said.

The second challenge is finding a consistent and sustainable market for the energy produced.

“We will be generating more energy than we can use on the dairy so we need an outlet so we can sell it,” Jordan said.